AI Change Management That Actually Works

00:00:06 Mark Smith
Welcome to the MVP show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called how to become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, let's get on with the show.

00:00:34 Mark Smith
Welcome back to the Microsoft Innovation Podcast. Today's guest is from Sweden. Please welcome Josephine. Jen AI, modern work lead. Josephine accelerates digital transformation. They're using tools like teams, Viva and copilot is all about people first solutions and a recent work shows how change management can be a secret source for hybrid success. For links are in the show notes. Welcome, Josefin.

00:01:03 Josefin Stenmark
Thank you so much.

00:01:06 Mark Smith
Good to have you here. I'm interested to jump into that change management story that you have and and what you've been doing with copilot. But before we start food, family and fun. What do they mean for you living in Sweden?

00:01:20 Josefin Stenmark
Oh, food, family and fun for food, I guess. We have to start with that, that I'm a vegetarian, so I eat a lot of of the fruits, vegetables and such and I have been actually really good now to to blend those. You know, if you do your own vegetarian burgers, for example, do you have? To to know the the perfect mixture to to have the the right the feeling of the texture. So that's my my secret weapon. And nowadays to to do this kind of work. And for family, I live in Gothenburg with my husband Michael, and for fun, I love to be creative and do lots of crafts like crocheting, knitting, everything you can do with your hands basically. That's what I do for fun.

00:02:21 Mark Smith
Nice. That's, you know, it's really interesting. It's a discussion I've had for the last two nights running. I went to a business event last night, and the discussion came up around and and both the conversations were what are we gonna do when we start going down to four day work weeks, three day work weeks etcetera. Because AI is going to assist us in so many more things. And the reason the conversation started is at the start of the week, I interviewed a guy who who became famous for a period of a 24 hours online because. He went and sat. He applied for jobs at. Was on. And he created a piece of software that acted like a screen of glass on his computer, and it read everything that was on the screen, heard everything that's coming in audio and anytime he was asked a question, it would research and give him the correct answer. So he built all this AI solution himself. He's 21 years old. And so it blew up. He got kicked out of, I think, his Columbia University. Because they considered it cheating, right? He was augmenting all this stuff in, and it's now a commercial product. He's moved to Silicon Valley and you know, he's he's off to the races building his a. Products. But I said to him, what happens to the world? You know, I was keen to get the view of a young person and he said something so intriguing to me. He said we'll have more time to craft. And I said, what do you mean? He goes we'll have more time to just he goes if you go back to before tech and before everyone had to work for money. He said, you know, you would go out, you would get the food and sustenance you needed for the. Day. And then you would hang out and talk with friends and do things together. You know, you'd build stuff, your design, your craft stuff and paint and all that type of stuff, because there's no other pressures to do anything else. And I'm like, I love that idea of going. Back to a world. Of craft, you know that we do. Stuff for pleasure. Do for pleasure, not for sale. Right. You know, craft has also become a thing. Well, you could sell it online, get an Etsy store or whatever. But what about just doing it? Like I've? I've found. I've got a. I've got a A2 year old and a four year old and I've got into doing plaster of Paris molds with them. You know in silicon molds and then we wait a few days and then they can paint them and I and I said to my wife, I don't care that these don't become something that sit on shelf and stuff or that get broken the two hours we spend together painting. These little plaster molds is there's the value you know in in. That that time.

00:04:54 Josefin Stenmark
Yeah. And I think also our brains actually need that kind of of activities when we work with AI, everything goes so fast and that it's just we speed up everything in, in the work life. And I think in our spare time, we really need to do this. More slowly activities like knitting, you know it's it's not you don't do it to to have a a shirt in the fastest amount of time you can order it online for less money for less time but it's for like yeah you you need to to win down.

00:05:30 Mark Smith
Yeah, I like it. What first, how did you get into the AI scene? What was your journey?

00:05:37 Josefin Stenmark
Yeah, it's a long journey actually, because I I worked more with with craft and with the adult education and with them in the field of social science for a long time or for a couple of years at least. I'm not that old yet, and there I started with in this. Study association to to work more with. Digital tools basically to to help my colleagues to to work more smartly and how we could develop our organization with digital tools. And so yeah, after a couple of years, I started to work as a consultant. And then actually with AI, it was when, when copilot came, I came out. I had so many customers. Who asked us about this? How do we get started with copilot? What is copilot? How do we train our users? How do we get ready for this new era? And then I I got this assignment. And for in the beginning we we were very. Clear that, uh, well, I I cannot call myself an copilot expert because copilot has just been around for maybe two months or something. So we explored and and really learned to get. There and then I I got just more and more assignment to to work with customers to to to develop this world. And now a couple of years later, I think I can call myself a couple of expert because I was there from the beginning and I've done so much experiment with with this.

00:07:21 Mark Smith
Product. Tell me personally, what's your favorite? Tool in the copilot suite. What do you find yourself using? Often it delights you. You take joy in using it.

00:07:34 Josefin Stenmark
Actually it's it's quite basic things like staying on track on what I have on my agenda. I do a lot of trainings and workshops with with customers to so to to get this week up over the day. What's in my teams, what's in my e-mail and everything. That actually helps me a lot. And then also to have these recordings and the recaps of meetings, when I discuss things early on with customers, it's really good to have this to to fall back to what we've what we've said, what they actually need. And I can get back to them. More quickly and give them give them a better solution and then in a faster amount of time. So I think that's my favorite parts to the the recaps.

00:08:28 Mark Smith
Nice. Nice. Have you used many of the new features that have been out in the last couple of months like researcher and you know some of those new agent tools coming in notebooks? Yeah. What? What's what? Yeah. What are your thoughts there?

00:08:39 Josefin Stenmark
Well, yeah. For notebook, I think we need to to explore it a little bit more, and even Microsoft think need to to to develop it a little bit more because now it's not that super clear when to use copilot. Or why do we change from corporate pages to notebooks? And when do we actually need to to collaborate with copilot and other colleagues? Because in notebooks we can do more of our projects. You can say so. I think we need a. Get more time to to to explore that feature, but for the agents it's it's it's great to to to make it more personal, personalized for the organization. And we build a lot of simple agents and more advanced and agents nowadays with their customers. Like helping them with with all kind of business issues to to fasten up or to to make it easier for for all employees to to use it. Because some people think it's it's very hard to use an AI agent, but it's not at all. It's like any other chat bot basically. But you have to understand the organization's need when you build an agent. So that's more of. The tricky part it's.

00:10:12 Mark Smith
Yeah. Tell me. Tell me about change management and. And the importance when you're working with a customer of taking them on, you know. I always feel that. There's training and there's change management and sometimes people confuse them as the same thing, but they are quite different. How do how do you think about change management? How do you apply it in the work that you do?

00:10:36 Josefin Stenmark
Yeah, that's a very good observation that it's a it's a different two different things, trainings and change management. And I think that customers also blow them up a bit that they they think, but we we we done this training and now why don't don't we see any change in the. And so with change management, I think we need to work more with their organizational culture. Like how do we learn new things, how do we support our employees to to try new things and to actually. Not always succeed with them. And how do we learn from from that journey to really set up this this culture of exploring a new way of working. And that's a lot more work than just having a training. And I see that all the time in in different kind of organizations. For some organizations, we can foster go into more of a training program because we have the, the management, they are with us. We have this all the components to to to drive change and sometimes we do we have to go back to. Like the the the fundamentals of the organizations, what are we doing and why and the why do we need the help of AI and how do we want to involve AI in our everyday work because in some many organizations there's lots of fear. How will this end up and what will it do with my with my with my job?

00:12:16 Mark Smith
Yeah. Yeah. So that's interesting that you've raised that. How do you help people overcome the fear? That this technology could ultimately replace them there is the potential for it. The media talks about it all the time. How do you set people at ease and get them beyond that so they can still develop their own personal skills in, in their use of AI?

00:12:42 Josefin Stenmark
I think it's a very important question to address. And I used to, well, most of the cases we do some kind of inspirational lecture or or workshop in the beginning. And then I talk about like the era of the NAI, when what it actually is so that you get a little bit more. Understanding of this kind of technology, but we don't. Go so deep that they they get confused, just like, OK, this is not the scary the person who will replace me. It's actually a technology and we are still in charge of it. We as people and we. As an organizer.So that we start with that and then we we explore the functions and I used to to show them a lot like how AI already is involved in some of the Microsoft 365 products and has been for a long time. It's not Gen. AI but it's other.

00:13:51 Josefin Stenmark
Parts of AI. So and then they get. Ohh actually I've I've I have already been working with AI for quite some time and it's it's convenient. And then we we start to to implement like easy prompts that you can benefit of every day in your work that you are still the expert in your field. And everything this but also hallucinations and that that you have to to to shake the answers that you are still in charge and it's more important than ever that you trust your your own knowledge. And then we we used to to to get the a better like starting starting point to to, to really implement this in organization.

00:14:45 Mark Smith
Have you? Have you run prompter funds with with customers?

00:14:48 Josefin Stenmark
Now I have.

00:14:50 Mark Smith
So so how? Just run me a bit through what you would typically do. How would they does it go for two hours, 3 hours, four hours? How long do would you run a prompt or phone session they are.

00:15:00 Josefin Stenmark
Yeah, we used to have like around 3 hours, you say?

00:15:05 Mark Smith
And then step me through just at a high level, what you would typically do from start to finish over that time.

00:15:12 Josefin Stenmark
Then I used to start with an inspirational part as well, like this is copilots capable of doing, but we don't start with one from day one. Usually it's it's users who have been working with copilot for some time and then we have this and I love to. Collect the. A department so that they all have the same roles and they work in a similar way, so we can pair them into groups in from their department and and we start to craft scenarios. What is the typical working day for you and your department? What issues do you face? Uh, what troubles or like small things that that makes you that take up time that you could actually get help from, coupled with and when we have these scenarios, we start to to craft prompts. And I used to challenge them to work with different. Uh, Microsoft 365 applications as well in this flow. Like maybe you you start with a teams meeting, you always have this kind of meeting and then you want to send out an A following e-mail to the group. How do you craft your first prompt to get this help all the way to? To get the more powerful prompt from Co pilots and it's it used to be very much fun and. And since we are and they are all in the same department, they get very much use of each other's prompts as well.

00:16:59 Mark Smith
Yeah, of course. Of course. Of course. That's. That's so cool. And so you say it's a fun type of experience. I enjoy doing it.

00:17:07 Josefin Stenmark
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.

00:17:09 Mark Smith
And do they feel them more? You know, what's their kind of takeaways from the event? What type of feedback have you had by running those type of events as into? Uh. How things change from somebody from the start of the day to the end of the day.

00:17:24 Josefin Stenmark
Many of them say that they have. They have seen new way of how they can use Microsoft 365 like the apps in in collaboration with it which each other. So that's apart. From copyright actually. That's the finding to work smarter, basically. With their their real scenario. And and then also like the the ingredients of a of a good prompt, many are still in in their thoughts of using like using Google so they just write a few searching words. So we really. Like I try to really explain what what it does when you when you. Explain your scenario. For to copilot and explain what you you expect and why and everything so they learn how to to craft these more powerful prompts. And that's usually a aha moment for many of them as well. And and. I want to work with the colleagues like many who have a corporate license. They they have it, they work, they explore and they they find things by themselves. But it's not that. It's not that that everybody share with their colleagues what they have done and what they have learned, so that's a really good thing as well would prompt the times that you you get the opportunity to learn together with your colleagues.

00:19:00 Mark Smith
Yeah, this is so interesting. And and obviously it it's it must be a lot of fun.

00:19:07 Josefin Stenmark
Yeah, it is. And I learn a lot as well for for from each from the tone and the and it's great because then I can have some tips and tricks for another customer from the last mounted on so yeah, it's a really great way to, to to dive into their their organization and their needs.

00:19:29 Mark Smith
So my final. Question for you is we've got about 6 months or less of the rest of the year to go. What are you? What are you most focused on? Like what new skills are you developing or you know that you wanna do between now and the end of the year?

00:19:44 Josefin Stenmark
Oh, that's a fun question. I always love to learn new things and you really have to in in this industry. And I think I will focus a lot on on them agents actually because that's what Microsoft are pushing out and that's what our our customers. Are most curious. Both and I actually I do courses for the West Coast, Swedish Chamber of Commerce here in Gothenburg and they asked me all the time we have to do more about agents. So I will really try to get get into that even more and then I've. Uh. I've I've seen that I have to to learn more about power platform as well. If I want to be in an Indian. Expert. So I think it's a lot about like automation and and AI in combination for the next 6 months.

00:20:44 Mark Smith
A lot of copilot studio. And power automate. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Excellent. Josefine. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story.

00:20:53 Josefin Stenmark
Thank you for having me.

00:21:01 Mark Smith
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP, Mark Smith, otherwise known as the nz365guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buy me a coffee.com/nz365guy. Thanks again and see you next time.